While her mother repeatedly engaged with the notion of white superiority and neglected herself and her daughter as well as engaged in self-hatred, her case pales in comparison to that of her daughter. Pecola represents the most complex case of the destructive idealization of white culture and subsequent denial and obliteration of black identity and is the tragic symbol in Morrison’s attempt to detail this legacy of racism. By the end of the novel, she exchanged her mind for the blue eyes she thought would make her loved and is even further ostracized by the community that failed to see its part in what happened. The inherent sense of being ugly and unworthy is a main part of Pecola’s character as she spends “Long hours she sat looking in the mirror, trying to discover the secret of the ugliness, the ugliness that made her ignored or despised at school, by teachers and classmates alike” (45). Aside from her good treatment by Claudia and Frieda, Pecola is ostracized in her community and even by her mother, who prefers cleanliness and the orderly life of the white family she works for or the simplicity of beautiful women and men on film to her real life in the storefront. By thinking that having blue eyes will make people love her, Pecola is expressing a wish that has double-significance to the main ideas Morrison is presenting for readers. On the one hand, there is the more obvious idea that blue eyes, which are associated with whiteness (which is, in itself, a non-color) means that she will be racially accepted. On another level, by wishing to change her eyes and thinking that this change will allow her to see things differently, Pecola is wishing that she could blind herself from the self-hatred in her family and community. Morrison is offering readers a complex understanding of this self-hatred that perpetuates many of the problems characters have by first offering a solution by non-color, only to show that this leads to blindness and insanity as in itself, it is nothingness. She is working through the culturally-confirmed ideas of white superiority as it exists in images of blond, blue-eyed, and white-skinned people as lacking substance.

Claudia, particularly since she is often a child as a narrator in “The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison, is relatively unconcerned about adult interactions and, more importantly, not yet a part of the seething self-hatred that has crept into the lives of older girls. In her revelations, particularly when she reminisces, she offers a shining ray of hope in an otherwise bleak novel as far as the topic of festering black self-hatred is concerned. She is such a beacon of hope because she is able to cast aside the notion of self-hatred, although this seems to be more because it’s in her character to do so than for any other reason. For instance, the reader is offered a clear distinction between Claudia and the other women when Pecola first moves in with the family and gazes adoringly at Shirley Temple on the milk cup. Upon seeing this, Claudia launches into a stream of thoughts that probe her feelings that are so opposite Pecola’s. Not only does she despise Shirley Temple, she is unable to see the beauty in the white and blue-eyed dolls she is given at Christmas. Not only did she not see the point of being a mother to it or finding it fun to sleep with, “I could not love it. But I could examine it to see what it was that all the world said was lovable” (21). Unlike other black women in the novel, particularly Pecola and her mother, even if it is indirectly and partially because of childish disinterest, Claudia is able to see past culturally-confirmed notions of what is beautiful. She dissects and then examines what lies behind the “round moronic eyes” only to find sawdust and hollowness. The adults around her are unable to comprehend her reaction to the doll, “The emotion of years of unfulfilled longing preened in their voices” (21) and the connection between adulthood and indoctrination into what is desirable becomes clear. Through her childish rejection and common sense inquiry into the beauty of something that is only such because people say it is, Morrison is able to probe the theme of notions of whiteness being more desirable early in the novel and, because of her narrator, in a simple and symbolic manner.

In relation to the ideas about Claudia being a ray of hope in the novel, it should also be noted that despite the black community’s rejection of the pregnant Pecola, Claudia and her sister are the only two people to not see ugliness in the situation. They try to magically plant the marigold seeds deep into the black earth in the hopes of resurrecting something to flower in the future. What Morrison reveals by this is that adults have been far too scarred by self-hatred, culturally and historically imposed or otherwise, to see anything black as beautiful, even an unborn child. While it is true that the child was conceived in the most dreadful way, the complete disregard the community has for its own is softened by the kindness of the sisters who are still untouched by this deep, relentless and cyclical hatred of all that is black or, more specifically, all that is not white, clean or sanitary. While this sense that Claudia represents perfect hope for a foreseeable future where this constant desire for whiteness at the sake of all that is real and present and good in the lives of black people is shattered when Claudia reveals that eventually she too would learn to love Shirley Temple and cleanliness, saying that this “learning” to appreciate white as right in society’s mind was a “adjustment without improvement” (23). It is disappointing that she eventually turns to the same standards as those she criticized, but this nonetheless allows Morrison to reinforce how strong and powerful of an enemy these cultural icons of what is right are, even for the strongest minded girls. Morrison points about how the atrocity of growing older is that children lose this capacity to separate images from larger ideals and standards and thus demonstrates how while Pecola is an extreme case, she is a representation of an entire culture of African-Americans who have been mislead by the cultivated notion of white superiority long after slavery and as a result, forced to look beyond their own lives for fulfillment.

Most of the black characters in the novel suffer from some degree of displacement, not only in terms of being poor and black in a white-dominated society, but more importantly, the displacement by culture and its images of whiteness. These images of white as superior to the characters who are African American, both in physical and other terms, is the focus of Morrison’s message. She is attempting to show readers how hollow the cultural images that have such an influence on everyone’s lives are with particular emphasis on the devastating impact these have on those who have little else to help guide them in terms of social icons. Although this is a painful novel African American to read on multiple levels, it is a cathartic one in terms of how it addresses the opposing ideals of white culture and how these ideals are internalized by those who are under-represented and marginalized. This novel is the working-through of the constantly perpetuating self-hatred that is the result of frustration of being unable to live up to the ideals of white society and ultimately, the tragic ending where the ground is unfertile and the future is stunted is a message about how we need to dig deep in the black earth to look for identity since the surface offers little in the way of nutrients for growth.

Work Cited

Morrison, Toni. “The Bluest Eye. Plume; New York, 2005.